There is no way Bulgaria will enter the Eurozone on January 1, 2025. This is what he said in the program "Focus Day“ on Radio "Focus“ the economist from TEAM Georgi Vuldjev.
Conference on "Bulgaria in the Eurozone, when?" was held on May 14, at which the financial, economic and political aspects and readiness of Bulgaria for its entry into the Eurozone were discussed. Guests at the forum to share their experience and ideas were the former Chancellor of Austria Wolfgang Schussel, Joseph Muscat – former Prime Minister of Malta and MEP, Adrian Nastase – former Prime Minister of Romania, Michalis Saris – former Cyprus Finance Minister and George Zanyas – former finance minister of Greece, as well as the ambassador of Slovenia to our country Natasha Bergel.
According to Vuldzhev, our accession will be delayed for at least a year because of our current non-fulfillment of the inflation criterion, which was also discussed at the conference itself. Another obstacle, according to him, is the political instability in the country. "But given that we do not fulfill one of the major formal criteria, it is of secondary importance.“
"Entering the Eurozone is something that Bulgaria does not need at the moment. I don't know why it's such a high priority for us. None of the state's experts ever presented a detailed economic argument for this," noted the expert and gave the example of Romania, which has been delaying its entry for a long time. This clearly shows that she does not consider joining the Eurozone as such a high priority for their economic development. Bulgaria should also think about this, the analyst believes.
According to Georgi Vuldjev, the successful countries in the Eurozone are countries that generally lead an adequate economic policy. The positives or negatives of revaluation and the adoption of the euro depend very much on what is done in the country itself upon its entry into the Eurozone. "The structure of the common currency presents some unpleasant long-term opportunities for countries with otherwise inadequate economic policies to deepen them, leading to ballooning and then to crisis. An example of this is Greece. There is no mechanism to correct such wrong policies when a country undertakes them, and even in a sense they are stimulated by lower interest rates on its national debt,” he further explained.
Much more important, according to him, is what kind of financial policy is being pursued outside of the case with the eurozone in Bulgaria. "In the last few years, we have been conducting a very bad policy in the fiscal sphere, in which we do not have enough investments, investments are constantly being cut to fill holes in the budget, and these holes are getting even bigger. This is crippling our long-term economic growth and this is a much more serious case than our joining the Eurozone,” concluded the TEAM economist emphatically.